Bamboo

There were a lot of albums like this in the late Sixties and early Seventies, where jazz instrumentalists were tasked with doing pop and rock hits in hopes of that sweet chart action. The most famous example would be Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream and Other Delights, and the least famous may be this one. A Japanese shakuhachi (bamboo flute) player, Minoru Muraoka takes on the Beatles and Dave Brubeck and a gang of other late Sixties titans here. The album gets deepest on some slower original tracks, where the band tries to channel soul in their own way, and all the breath of the shakuhachi has room to be as oddly menacing as it is. Koto player Kimiko Yamanouchi makes “The Positive and The Negative” into a rare groove goldmine.